Twenty Years After Communism

2014 History

Author : Michael H. Bernhard
Release : 2014
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 143/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Twenty Years After Communism by : Michael H. Bernhard

Download or read book Twenty Years After Communism written by Michael H. Bernhard. This book was released on 2014. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Remembering the past, especially as collectivity, is a political process, thus the politics of memory and commemoration is an integral part of the establishment of new political regimes, new identities, and new principles of political legitimacy. This volume is about the explosion of the politics of memory triggered by the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe, particularly about the politics of its commemoration twenty years later. It offers seventeen in-depth case studies, an original theoretical framework, and a comparative study of memory regime types and their origins. Four different kinds of mnemonic actors are identified: mnemonic warriors, mnemonic pluralists, mnemonic abnegators, and mnemonic prospectives. Their combinations render three different types of memory regimes: fractured, pillarized, and unified. Disciplined comparative analysis shows how several different configurations of factors affect the emergence of mnemonic actors and different varieties of memory regimes. There are three groups of causal factors that influence the political form of the memory regime: the range of structural constraints the actors face (e.g., the type of regime transformation), cultural constraints linked to past political conflict (e.g., salient ethnic or religious cleavages), and cultural and strategic choices actors make (e.g. framing post-communist political identities)"--

Twenty Years After Communism

2014-07-02 Political Science

Author : Michael Bernhard
Release : 2014-07-02
Genre : Political Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 151/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Twenty Years After Communism by : Michael Bernhard

Download or read book Twenty Years After Communism written by Michael Bernhard. This book was released on 2014-07-02. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the fall of the Berlin Wall is positively commemorated in the West, the intervening years have shown that the former Soviet Bloc has a more complicated view of its legacy. In post-communist Eastern Europe, the way people remember state socialism is closely intertwined with the manner in which they envision historical justice. Twenty Years After Communism is concerned with the explosion of a politics of memory triggered by the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe, and it takes a comparative look at the ways that communism and its demise have been commemorated (or not commemorated) by major political actors across the region. The book is built on three premises. The first is that political actors always strive to come to terms with the history of their communities in order to generate a sense of order in their personal and collective lives. Second, new leaders sometimes find it advantageous to mete out justice on the politicians of abolished regimes, and whether and how they do so depends heavily on their interpretation and assessment of the collective past. Finally, remembering the past, particularly collectively, is always a political process, thus the politics of memory and commemoration needs to be studied as an integral part of the establishment of new collective identities and new principles of political legitimacy. Each chapter takes a detailed look at the commemorative ceremony of a different country of the former Soviet Bloc. Collectively the book looks at patterns of extrication from state socialism, patterns of ethnic and class conflict, the strategies of communist successor parties, and the cultural traditions of a given country that influence the way official collective memory is constructed. Twenty Years After Communism develops a new analytical and explanatory framework that helps readers to understand the utility of historical memory as an important and understudied part of democratization.

Remembering Communism

2014-10-01 History

Author : Maria N. Todorova
Release : 2014-10-01
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 326/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Remembering Communism by : Maria N. Todorova

Download or read book Remembering Communism written by Maria N. Todorova. This book was released on 2014-10-01. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Remembering Communism examines the formation and transformation of the memory of communism in the post-communist period. The majority of the articles focus on memory practices in the post-Stalinist era in Bulgaria and Romania, with occasional references to the cases of Poland and the GDR. Based on an interdisciplinary approach, including history, anthropology, cultural studies and sociology, the volume examines the mechanisms and processes that influence, determine and mint the private and public memory of communism in the post-1989 era. The common denominator to all essays is the emphasis on the process of remembering in the present, and the modalities by means of which the present perspective shapes processes of remembering, including practices of commemoration and representation of the past. The volume deals with eight major thematic blocks revisiting specific practices in communism such as popular culture and everyday life, childhood, labor, the secret police, and the perception of “the system”.

Reflections on Communism

2020

Author : Paul Hollander
Release : 2020
Genre :
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : /5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Reflections on Communism by : Paul Hollander

Download or read book Reflections on Communism written by Paul Hollander. This book was released on 2020. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty years ago the Berlin Wall fell, marking the collapse of Soviet communism. The failure of the communist system was not merely economic and political; it was a moral failure as well. Over time communism created a deep disillusionment and revulsion among those who lived under it. The diminished sense of legitimacy of the ruling elite in the Soviet Union and Soviet bloc countries contributed to the unraveling of those systems as well. At the same time, there is a remarkable lack of moral concern in the West with the atrocities committed under communist systems, including the tens of millions of people who perished as a result of communist policies. By contrast there has been a great deal of impassioned condemnation of the outrages of Nazism. The most important reason for treating Nazism and communism differently has been the perception that communist crimes were unintended consequences of the pursuit of lofty goals whereas the goals of Nazism themselves were unmitigated evil. Western intellectuals who had once idealized the Soviet Union have done little soul searching regarding the roots of their beliefs. The long association of idealism with animosity toward commerce and capitalism among Western intellectuals has contributed to a reluctance to criticize a system ostensibly established in opposition to the values they abhorred. Public attitudes in former communist countries have been conflicted because of the arguable complicity of many citizens in keeping the old system in power. A predominant attitude in Eastern Europe and Russia toward the former communist systems has been a mixture of oblivion, denial, and repression. Contemporary Western attitudes toward the fall of the Soviet system suggest that political beliefs endure when they are widely shared and can satisfy important emotional needs.

Russia Twenty Years After

1996 History

Author : Victor Serge
Release : 1996
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
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Book Synopsis Russia Twenty Years After by : Victor Serge

Download or read book Russia Twenty Years After written by Victor Serge. This book was released on 1996. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Victor Serge (1890-1947), historian, translator and novelist, a Belgian-born Russian, was politically active in seven countries, participated in three revolutions, and spent more than ten years in various captivities. He was born in political exile of Russian anarchist parents who had been implicated in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, and he died in exile in Mexico. Russia Twenty Years After, his first major work, was written just after his harrowing release and expulsion from the Stalinist gulag, where he had spent three years as an intransigent oppositionist to the regime. It is still one of the most important documentary accounts of the then-emerging Stalinist system. Stalin almost stilled Serge's voice, but in exile Serge, along with Leon Trotsky, took up the defense of those falsely accused and silenced and tried to alert the world to what Stalin was doing in the name of socialism in the USSR, and to analyze how the Russian Revolution, which had been the hope for humankind, was in the process of devouring itself. This edition also includes Serge's "Thirty Years after the Russian Revolution", his eloquent summary and analysis of the Stalinist counterrevolution that has never before been published in English. The introductory essay by Susan Weissman introduces the reader to Serge, evaluating his contribution to our current understanding of the former Soviet Union. She also updates Serge's accounts of the fate of various oppositionists with information from the newly opened Soviet archives.

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